A Soft Reboot
by Spacebutt
Summary: Once every couple centuries, the nations inexplicably disappear and are reborn as humans. But the memories and nationhood gradually return to them and they have funny ways of getting back to each other.
1. He Dreams of the Sea

**Title**: A Soft Reboot (1/?)**  
Rating**: PG (Subject to change)  
**Warnings**: Swear words  
**Summary**: Once every couple centuries, the nations inexplicably disappear and are reborn as humans. But the memories and nationhood gradually return and they have funny ways of getting back to each other.

* * *

England dreams of the sea. He dreams of white frosted waves and of the wide expanse of the ocean. He breathes the salt so deep into his lungs, they form shining white crystals in the cavity of his chest. He dreams of mermaids and their iridescent pearly scales, of lusty sirens and songs that are so haunting and sad, that a deep yawning hole tears his heart open.

James is five-years-old and he dreams of the sea. The biggest body of water he's been to is Derwentwater in the Lake District, yet his bed rocks beneath his body as he tosses and turns like the waves he knows so well. He can command a crew of a hundred of the worst seadogs anyone could have the displeasure of meeting (and he'd probably be the worst of them.) but he still needs mum's help tying his shoelaces before racing off to school. Dad makes bangers and mash for tea and laughs when his son demands to be called Captain. "I am Captain Kirkland of Her Royal Majesty's fleet," he proudly declares. His parents can only shake their heads and wonder what kids are being taught at school nowadays.

James is six-years-old, lives in Upper Warlingham, just inside the London Commuter belt and dreams of the sea five hundred years ago. His natural sea legs and sea lust and sea soul don't go unnoticed but are attributed to the childish desire of wanting to be a pirate. He goes sailing with a playmate and her parents don't believe that he has never been on a dinghy before. He reads the wind better than birds and flies the boat higher and faster than any of them. He loves and loves how the water clings to him and his clothes, possessively trailing down his cheeks and working its wet way into his shoes.

He grows and dreams some more. He falls in love with his Kings and Queens again and again and mourns their dream-deaths. Henry VIII breaks his heart and country and Queen Victoria strengthens him and elevates him until he becomes the world itself. The Golden Age is truly a sparkling bright gold and the fire of London fills him with fever. He wakes sweating under his Buzz Lightyear duvet, but the back of his eyelids are stained red and orange and blinding yellow and his heart burns so much he retches.

He grows some more and his head becomes a battlefield. The Jerries are the enemy for a while and walks with a limp – his body can't tell that he doesn't really have trench foot. When a mouse terrifies his teacher and sends the class into hysterics, James calmly picks it up and pops it out the door. His friends ask if he's handled mice before. The truth: Rats on the front line are huge monstrous things that lumber and climb over your body as you try sleep.

Sleeping in a dream, sleeping while sleeping – that had to be a sign of something. James first realises that he's different when they have an assignment in handwriting class. Everyone wrote of dreams full of public nakedness, of terrifying monster ducks, of shrinking and living in shells. Miss Marigold smiled at him when she looked at James'. "Did you watch a documentary before bedtime, dear?" she asked, sticking a gold star on his descriptions men in poofy trousers – the Tudors. Had the assignment been a day later and James would have written about the Plague. He itches for a week afterwards.

His parents worry as he talks to them of all the death – "People die so much," he had said while pouring milk over his coco pops. They were the same colour as the mud at the battle of the Somme.

"What do you mean?" Mum asks, hiding her concern behind a lipstick smile.

"There are so many ways to die!" he exclaims and lists the ways he had seen (beheading/burning/hanging, drawing and quartering) and his mother's already on the phone to a therapist.

The therapist is American and knows nothing of their islands' history and claims James just has an overactive imagination and shouldn't be watching those sorts of films at his age anyway.

James is ten and they start history at school. He notices the similarities – no, he notices the differences, the inconsistencies and doesn't hesitate to point them out. He gets in trouble for backchat. But the books get most things right and he's smart enough to realise that maybe these aren't dreams after all. He's also smart enough not to say anything – three different therapists and five detentions have taught him that.

James Plender is sixteen. He likes football (he supports Leeds), Dr. Who and the Hoosiers. He's good at history and politics and rubbish at math and home economics. Passable at French. Enjoys debating. He has a couple of close friends but not enough to be 'popular'. He is sixteen, dreams of the sea and has the whole history of the United Kingdom inside his head.

James is sixteen and he feels terribly, terribly alone.

* * *

He also feels old; older than his parents, than his grandparents. The weariness is heavy and settles deep into his bones. Every exhale leaves him feeling emptier than before, as if something more than air drains out of his body and James has to remember to recapture it, to suck it back in before it escapes. Whatever_ it_ is.

Only eighteen and already tired of everything. James is hollow; someone must have come along and scooped everything out of him until he was just skin and bone and veins and blood. His heart rattles around inside his chest like a coin in a can as he goes along his daily life. Wake up, breakfast, walk to school, skim through class, walk home, rinse and repeat and spit more of himself out as people all around him live and he merely observes and fails to take notes. One day, school will be replaced with university and then with work and then with retirement and then with death when he's actually, properly old.

Something important is _missing_ from his being. He feels it in his dreams – a connection, a bond with something much greater than his own tiny body. As he sleeps, he is filled with a million voices and is bursting with life, bursting until the light nearly shines from his eyes, his mouth, his fingertips. The land under him pulls at his feet. He feels the people tilling the earth, turning him over and over so that he can breathe into crop and seed. He feels the water lapping at his edges, the rush inside his soul as the waves batter against him and his cliffs. The clouds over the mountains are in his breath. He is a piece of this planet, a small piece of land and water and people and history.

And he wakes up and feels even smaller. Suddenly he's just James again.

How he _aches_ for this connection. He spoke of this once, with a counselor who was more competent than the others. He had told James that he should think about socialising more. So James does, but he fucks rather than socialises. He talks to a girl at his sixteenth birthday party and his sand coloured hair and his diamond cut accent draw her in, but it is when he touches her and smiles that she falls. They touch a lot more that night and for the first time, James feels a flicker of it along with the physical pleasure, like a light bulb about to die. He feels it again with the next girl. And the next. Curious, he tries it once with a boy and it is the same. What he _does_ discover is that he only feels this tug inside him if his partner is British. He spends the night with an American girl once, all long legs and kilowatt smile, and there is nothing. (The sex is still amazing though.)

It would have been so easy to get addicted. He could have spent his teenage years drinking and smoking and screwing anything with a hole and his grades wouldn't have suffered one bit. (His teachers were already considering calling him a genius.) But he didn't. James might have gone down that route if it hadn't been for _him_.

It is the beginning of school and James is just entering the sixth form. There are a lot of new faces in that first tutor class meeting and everyone has to introduce themselves and it is boring as hell and he smiles and nods politely and then –

"My name is Yama- ah. I mean, Mitsuru Yamada. I am here for a year from Japan. It is nice to meet everyone." For a moment, Mitsuru looks like he's about to bow, of all things, before he sits down.

James can't take his eyes off him.

He doesn't hear anyone else's self-introductions and doesn't care. Mitsuru's voice strikes something deep inside his memory and as soon as they have to vacate the classroom, James chases after the new Japanese boy.

"Excuse me," he says, grabbing Mitsuru's shoulder and in that brief moment of contact, something runs through the both of them that makes Mitsuru drop his books and makes James choke on his own breath. Everyone rushes by and the two of them are static islands in a sea of people.

"Oh, sorry!" James shakes himself and crouches to help Mitsuru pick up his belongings. "I didn't mean to surprise you."

"It is okay," Mitsuru replies, bending down.

They make eye contact, proper eye contact, for the first time and James immediately thinks of something a girl said, back during the summer when he was trying to discover that spark in more and more people. The girl had been an English literature student at some university in London and liked trying to turn everything into poetry. "_Your eyes are deep,"_ she had said, trailing a hand along his cheek. _"Deep but empty. If I shouted, I could hear my voice echo inside. You have holes in your eyes that lead to the universe."_

"_Okay_," he had replied, wondering if she was high. "_That's what the pupil is, isn't it? Just a hole to let light through._"

"_The pupil is a hole, yeah. But last night, when we were fucking, you let the light out._"

James dismissed her as mental and hadn't seen her again. But when he looks at Mitsuru's dark eyes, he kind of understands what she was trying to say. He shows Mitsuru where the science block is, even though his history classroom is on the other side of school. Mitsuru thanks him in careful English and James offers to be his guide until he settles in. "We're in the same tutor group, so it's no problem," James says, unaware of the desperate note in his voice. For reasons unknown to everyone else, they became fast friends - their friendship didn't even make sense to their classmates.

(But they both like tea _a lot_, so that says something, they guess.)

Mitsuru sleeps over at James' house one time to prepare a presentation on a current event for tutor period. They finish quickly and spend the rest of the time playing video games. At 2:38am, they're still awake even though they have long turned off the xBox. "Hey," James says and hears Mitsuru turn over in his camp bed, sees Mitsuru's deep eyes flash at him. "Do you… do you ever dream?"

"Yes, I see dreams." [1]

"I do dream," James corrects. (Mitsuru made him promise to help him improve his English and to correct him no matter where they are. This is tough for James' innate British politeness, but he tries.) "What do you dream of?"

Mitsuru is silent and James knows him well enough to know that the Japanese boy is searching for the right words, sifting through the files in his head. (But they have only known each other for a month but it feels like centuries longer than that. Why?)

"I do dream of people and places and things that have happened before," Mitsuru says and James feels a tightening in his lungs.

"And how do you feel?"

"Excuse me?"

"In your dreams, how do you feel?"

"I don't know what you mean."

James rolls over on to his back and stares at the ceiling. "In my dreams," he says, trying to remember how he explained the feeling to his therapists when he was a child. "I feel like a million people." He spreads his arms. "I feel huge, like I'm actually important."

"Ah," says Mitsuru. "Is that so?"

"Yeah," says James.

Mitsuru is silent and James' heart falls down and down. Maybe he is wrong. Maybe this Japanese boy isn't like him-

"Today," Mitsuru says suddenly. "We studied about space in physics class. Mr. Barth taught us about black holes. You are familiar with them?"

"Yeah."

"A black hole is very dense and has a lot of gravity – a lot of mass in a small space. If you make the mass of the Earth into a black hole, the whole Earth, it would only be an inch big. All this matter in such a tiny space…

"_This_ is what I feel when I do dream."

James isn't wrong.

That night they both dream – they smile at each other over the shoulders of the British foreign secretary and the Japanese minister as the Anglo-Japanese Alliance is signed in 1902. When they wake, Mitsuru sleepily mumbles, "Good morning, Igirisu-san."

"Morning Japan," James replies and nothing is weird about that at all.

So then they are two. And James feels a little fuller inside.

* * *

[1] In Japanese, to dream is 夢を見る which is literally 'to see a dream'.

And with this I leap into the Hetalia fandom. (Technically my first Hetalia fic was a Germany/Paul the Octopus prompt but I'm ignoring that for now.) I needed a little break from Gundam Wing and KHR to be honest and this seemed like a good idea. c: Because I'm experimenting with my writing, comments would be adored. Thank you for reading!


	2. That Time of the Millennium

**Title**: A Soft Reboot (2/?)**  
Rating**: PG (Subject to change)  
**Warnings**: Swear words  
**Summary**: Once every couple centuries, the nations inexplicably disappear and are reborn as humans. But the memories and nationhood gradually return and they have funny ways of getting back to each other.

**Note**: Because I'm a derp, I forgot to mention in the summary that this will probably end up UKUS with mentions of various other pairings along the side. Sorry for tricking you into reading nonUKUSfans! I'll change the summary in a moment.

* * *

_Before James and before Mitsuru, there are nations. _

Even before he opens his eyes, China knows that today would be different. He wakes up slowly, almost having to fight for every sliver of consciousness. He breathes with care and feels that if he doesn't concentrate on the _in out in out _of air, he'd forget entirely and just sink back into something like sleep.

But China manages to get up and he feels his body creak and groan as he shuffles into the bathroom.

The mirror reflects China's young man's face and says nothing of the thousands of years below his skin. China leans forward, searching for something in his pores and in the fine hairs on his cheeks.

He finds it.

'_Ah,' _he thinks, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. The bone is firm under the paper-thin skin under the socket. _'So it's that time of the millennium again.'_

He splashes water on his face and goes to make tea.

China is _tired_ and the fatigue weighs heavily on his shoulders. There are a billion people whizzing around inside him, one billion out of the Earth's six with many more of his children settled around the world. He is still attached to them; strings stretch from his heart to theirs and they vibrate and oscillate with their fears and dreams. China feels bloated and the bubbles in his stomach won't rest.

(Jasmine tea is meant to be good for the digestion. Too bad it can't solve overpopulation and politics and 150 million people living in poverty.)

He sits in the stiff armchair his hotel room provides and gazes out over the German city centre. It is early, but he knows that people are waking in their homes, each of them flickering like blades of grass in a windy field. Can Germany feel them stirring in his body – blood cells oxygising and deoxygenising? A bell rings out, six peals, and China imagines Ludwig stretching the sleep away. Which city is the summit in again? Bonn? Berlin? He can't remember; his head is clogged up with economy and debts and controversy, like wet tissue in a plughole.

Is it important?

No, not really. In the grand scheme of China's life of thousands and thousands of years, _nothing _is really that important. Which is the problem.

If it is going to happen today, he thinks, there is absolutely no point in planning anything in the immediate future. Or worrying about anything, and he has had enough of that recently. So he sits back, lets the tea warm his hands and wonders what tie to wear that day. There is time - the small nations are always the first ones to go.

And he is anything but small.

His phone rings and the tinkly theme tune of Shinatty-chan shakes him out of this thought. His aide wants to go over the day's schedule. China listens with flagging interest, only interjecting with necessary sounds to show that he is paying attention. Before the aide says goodbye, China says, "Have you booked the return tickets to Beijing yet?"

"No, sir."

"Don't book a ticket for me, I won't be joining you on the flight home."

There is a beat, a small silence. This isn't normal. "Sir?"

"You'll understand. _Zài jiàn._" There is a sense of finality in the goodbye and in the click and beep of China hanging up.

The aide doesn't understand, even after he goes to the conference room in the Rathaus in Düsseldorf to deliver a folder that China has forgotten. This also isn't normal; China _doesn't_ forget things and the manila folder containing the data on today's presentation is not something that could have been forgotten –

(But China hasn't forgotten it. He left it on the hotel dressing table almost as a message: There will be no presentation that day.)

There is no answer when the aide knocks on the door. There is no answer when he knocks a second time. Or when he opens the door and finds the room empty, save for the scattered clothing of the nations.

China's suit is almost neatly gathered on his chair. His shirt is still inside the jacket, his tie still around the collar of the shirt, his socks inside his shoes. It is almost as if he had just vani

* * *

There is a triangle lodged inside their hearts. Each time something hurts, -_the pain of your people: their hungers, their frustrations, their needs_- the triangle turns, digging its corners into the beating flesh of their ventricles and atriums and oh how it _aches_. But over time, with enough hurt and enough rotations, the flesh becomes hard and the corners of these triangles are worn away, leaving a smooth disc. It spins and spins and spins and nothing hurts at all.

They can't feel.

This is the problem and _renewal_ is the answer.

* * *

**AN**: Thank you for all your kind reviews for the previous chapter! I was absolutely blown away by all the support I got for what is really just an indulgence fic. I'll try and make it good and make it make sense, rather than just writing willy-nilly. I hope you review again (even though this is a ridiculously short chapter.)


	3. The Red of Memories

**Title**: A Soft Reboot (3/?)**  
****Rating**: PG (Subject to change)  
**Warnings**: Swear words  
**Summary**: Once every couple centuries, the nations inexplicably disappear and are reborn as humans. But the memories and nationhood gradually return and they have funny ways of getting back to each other.  
**AN**: WHAT TIME IS IT? It's update time. A plot in this chapter? Haha no, just kidding.

* * *

_So decades pass and the Earth still spins and the stars still travel in the sky and human beings still live. Decades pass and the nations eventually reappear one by one. They are born as weak, frail human babies with tiny, tender hearts and corners as wicked as knife's edge. This is renewal. _

Mitsuru is like a doll in his cotton-blue yukata. He clutches the thin hand of his grandmother as he carefully leads her across a Tokyo road. Her chestnut face crackles into a smile at the solemness of her grandson when he warns her about the shallow pothole in the street.

He is four-years-old and the all cicadas in Japan are singing for his first summer festival. The air is warm and the glow of lanterns and fireflies hang low. A drum beats in the distance, lending its heartbeat to the crowd. The ground almost vibrates under Mitsuru's sandaled feet.

"Obaachan, obaachan!" Mitsuru calls, enchanted by the masks and music, the sweet smells and the sizzle of meat on the grill. His dark eyes are huge on his tiny face and a pink flush dots his cheeks. Grandmother drinks in the sight; Mitsuru is usually such a serious and stoic child, that it's difficult to hold his interest with frivolous things. His attention drips away like sand in an hourglass and his expression becomes curiously glazed, as if thinking very intensely about something out of everyone else's reach. But he is a good child, Grandmother thinks. She buys him a cloud of cotton candy bigger than his head and Mitsuru burrows into it with delight.

She lets him direct their course and together they weave through the ladies in butterfly kimono, the bright reds and oranges of the stalls, the boys watching firecrackers fizzle into embers on the ground. She feels a tug on the loose sleeve of her yukata. "Obaachan," Mitsuru says and she follows the line of his small finger. He is pointing at a display of dolls, meticulously stacked, and the young shopkeeper smiles hopefully. "May I get something for Kappa-san?"

Ah, Kappa-san: Mitsuru's companion who lives in their bathtub. Grandmother has to force her smile.

Mitsuru chattering away as he splashes in the water has become commonplace in their household and is initially quite charming. At first, Grandmother thought he was just talking to himself, that he was just making noises to amuse himself with the echoes of the bathroom tiles. But when she listened, pressed her ear against the sliding door, she realised that Mitsuru was having a conversation: a conversation with questions and answers and someone answering those questions silently.

Her stomach turned to water and panic constricted her like a snake. _Who is in there__ -__ he's alone__,__ oh Mitsu-chan who are you talking to and __what if I can't protect you what if what if what if _– She burst in, brandishing a broom and discovered Mitsuru alone. "Is it time to get out now?" Mitsuru asked, concerned and confused. Grandmother just nodded mutely and put down her broom. The room smelt like fish and a patch of air shimmered in the corner of her vision.

Later, she learned of Kappa-san. She can't remember ever telling Mitsuru the legends of the _kappa_, Japanese water sprites that usually inhabited lakes and rivers. Perhaps he was taught folklore in school or he read it in a book?

She allows Mitsuru to buy a small trinket – a little woollen doll – for his imaginary friend.

(_Is_ he imaginary though? How does Mitsuru have deep, solitary discussions about the early Yamato rule, about the entrance of Buddhism into Japan, about the end of _sakoku _and how Japan had let strangers around the world feel and taste their country for the first time, let foreign feet imprint their soil?)

The night goes on. Then something happens that stays with Grandmother for a long time afterwards.

Mitsuru is crouching by the _kingyo_ stall, a lone still form in the shouting and jostling mass of children thrusting their nets into goldfish-filled water. He is staring at the ripples, forehead wrinkled as if the water is telling him something important. "Mitsu-chan?" Grandmother bends with some difficulty, hand already in her purse. "Would you like to have a go?" When he turns his head towards her, Grandmother is startled by the sheer age of his expression – he looks like a little old man with deep, tired eyes. They draw her in and a dawning dread swallows her whole.

Something terrible is about to happen.

"We have to go," Mitsuru says. Grandmother picks him up – he is so small and light – and she feels him trembling in her arms. When she looks back on this, she wonders why she didn't question her four-year-old grandson, how she knew instinctively that if they didn't move, they would die. Grandmother runs as fast as she can, but her age makes it difficult and the crowds are dense and Mitsuru starts shaking harder, shaking from his core. Her perfectly coiled white hair loosens from its bun. "Get to a c-clear place," he instructs, teeth chattering. "No trees or buildings."

'_But this is Tokyo,' _she thinks, but she follows the whispered directions in her ear. Buildings loom over them and Grandmother is squeezed by an icy fear that they will snap in half, like breaking sticks over knees, and crash down on them. The fear squeezes her so hard that her lungs constrict and her eyes are so wide and her beating heart is making her vision pulse. People are staring and if Grandmother had the air in her chest she would be screaming. _It's not safe! Run, run! Please! Find somewhere to hide! _

But Mitsuru is almost vibrating against her chest and is murmuring something and _somehow_, Grandmother still wonders about it, a sick sense of unease seeps through the festival. People stop and look up, as if the sun had been covered by an unnoticed cloud, except it is night and there is no sun and no cloud. There is only a sudden deep-set need to find somewhere safe. The children don't even cry when they are taken away from the games and bonfires as the crowds start sweeping out of the festival and vendors start packing up even though the festival should last through the night. There is a franticness to everyone's movement.

Grandmother is still running. The park; the park is there. There are no buildings in the park and the sky is black and wide and safe and empty over them.

"Obaachan, s-stop," Mitsuru gasps, his voice thin and high. He spasms violently. "Get down!" She drops on to the grass and covers Mitsuru's heaving body with her own. Others are following their example and then -

The first wave hits and the ground shakes a thousand times harder than the vibrations of the drums. People are screaming against the scrape and grind of tectonic plates deep below them. Mitsuru curls up and sobs, arms wrapped around his stomach. Everyone is clutching something; their bags, their heads, their children- tethering themselves to something tangible so panic can't pull them up and away. Something too close to them crashes and splits and Grandmother thinks that this might actually be the end of everything.

Minutes pass and nothing in history is as long as those minutes.

Then Mitsuru breathes and calms and he unravels his coiled body. He places a still hand over his grandmother's, the other over the ground. The stillness catches and spreads. With a dying rumble, the earth quietens.

The dolls have all fallen and everything wobbles perilously.

But they have not been crushed.

They have not been crushed.

Grandmother presses Mitsuru tight to her chest, wraps her hand around the back of his head and wonders what her grandson is exactly. Mitsuru hurts for days afterwards and he twitches with aftershocks.

* * *

They call each other England and Japan for the rest of morning without really noticing. Only when a classmate tilts her head and asks, "Isn't that, like, racist?" do they look at each other with raised eyebrows and realise that something between them had changed and they can't pinpoint what exactly.

It feels natural, so they keep doing it. Then someone else in class calls James 'England' and his chest tightens uncomfortably, as if a secret is rampaging and running loose amongst too many people. They shouldn't know about that name, how did they know, _how did they know_ –

Mitsuru places a hand on his shoulder and James' panic attack dissipates, leaving cloudy confusion. Really, it isn't a big deal. 'England' and 'Japan' are just silly names that they call each other for no reason other than it feels good on the tongue and comes out naturally.

(Still, they decide to only use these names in private. They never discuss the reason; they probably couldn't have even if they tried.)

They don't discuss anything really, with James' awkwardness with feelings and emotions and Mitsuru's uselessness at talking about things that James doesn't bring up himself. They both ignore the fact that they're different to everyone around them, which is probably a bad thing. It is almost natural that their odd relationship, based on only a feeling that they're keeping an earth-old acquaintanceship alive, would encounter a sudden and explosive crash.

The dreams come less and less frequently now. It's almost as if the information and these 'memories' burrow into James' head without his knowing – as if they had always been there. However, the knife-sharp reality of the dreams James does have is frightening – one night, it is 1942 and it's hot and muggy in Singapore. The air is thick with blood and James knows an anger unlike anything he had felt before. He coughs and his palm turns a shiny red: the same red of his Empire, the same red of the Japanese flag. He has been painting the map with his colonies since the 16th century and he was not going to lose Singapore to –

The ground rocks and the high-pitched squeal of falling bombs assault James' ears. The explosions feel like hornet stings on his body and the death of his troops feels like a painful itch in the flesh of his heart.

Ammunition for their anti-aircraft fire was depleted. Another bomb drops, another explosion flares and curls and the hoarse screams resonate and vibrate inside James' head. The Japanese plane buzzes overhead and James looks up and knows instinctively who is sitting in the cockpit and knows that he's watching him with tar-black eyes and a tiny self-allowed smirk.

It is the biggest surrender the British Empire has ever known. James feels the crushing embarrassment and rage swirl inside him, rushing along his veins, all the way into his fingers and he clenches his fists until they shake and he roars at the sky as they surrendered at gunpoint. "_**KIKU-**_"

The dream ends there. James' jaw is sore from clenching it as he slept and his chest hurts from the shrapnel. That morning, he rattles around the kitchen with an unusual violence and can't look at Mitsuru in the eyes without wanting to lash out and take Singapore back from him and claw it out of his body.

(But it was just a dream, surely.)

Mitsuru is strangely apologetic that day, which is saying something as he is the most apologetic person anyone can know. He doesn't talk much and he lets James simmer and boil in his chair next to him and be unnecessarily curt and sharp with him.

"Woah, did you and Japan have a fight or something?" someone asks when Mitsuru goes to the bathroom before class.

"Something like that," James manages to say between gritted teeth. When Mitsuru comes back, all James can see is a blinding white uniform with gold trim at the shoulders and a sword at his side and that tiny self-allowed smirk –

James doesn't think. Mitsuru sits down and James hisses something that flies like an arrow straight into his chest. Mitsuru's whole body jerks and his usually serene expression tightens and twists. He snarls something in Japanese and leaps at James like a wildcat and the both of them fly out of their chairs, kicking and punching. James yells something about colonies and wars and surrenders. It's dramatic and exciting and it's a _punch-up _so of course the entire class is shouting and stamping until a teacher rushes in and tries to pry the two boys apart without getting badly hurt himself.

Mitsuru has a bloody nose and James has a swollen eye and they both have detention that day and for the rest of the week.

They don't look at each other until then, when they're imprisoned in a classroom and when James' blood has cooled and his mind has cleared. He's a stubborn idiot though, so it takes him an age to say something that won't worsen the situation.

"I didn't mean it, by the way," he says, a kind-of-almost apology.

"I know," Mitsuru replies coolly. James winces and realises he has to turn the kind-of-almost into something more substantial.

"I-I shouldn't have said it."

"It's okay." There's a tight note in his voice that hovers above them. They're still not looking at each other.

James curses his lack of ability to deal with these sorts of things. Apologising has never come easily to him. He says in a rush, expelling everything from his lungs in one go. "I shouldn't have said that your emperor is just a figurehead and a farce of a god."

The tight note loosens in the air and Mitsuru finally turns. "It's okay," he says again and he's gentler and the black of his eyes aren't as hard as before. "My ways are just as foreign to you as yours are to me."

"It was the battle of Singapore last night," James says. It doesn't excuse anything, really, and they both know this, but Mitsuru nods and stills. Then -

"There's a boy in my Japanese culture classes in the community hall," Mitsuru says. "He's from Greece." When he says '_Greece'_, the word is weighed with images of green eyes like olives, skin like bronze statues and dawn spreading her fingers over the Aegean. "I think you should meet him. He's…" Mitsuru doesn't finish the sentence and doesn't have to.

They walk back together afterwards and James wonders how many more of them are walking around feeling empty and alone, but strangely drawn to the land beneath them.

* * *

**AN: **I'm so excited about this fic. It's going to be a real behemoth. I think. Thanks for reading and comments would be loved and converted into faster updates. Somehow.

This was beta'd by hymenated (iamlolweasel at LJ) and she is fantabulous and amazing. (If any of you guys are KHR fans and like Byakuran & co and alternate universes and amazing writing, please go check out her fic _**the mindbody problem**_**, **which I'm betaing for her. Do it do it do it.)

Also check out the wikipedia entry on the kappa. For the sake of my mental health, I'm going with the anime portrayal of the kappa and not the traditional 'child-eating, butt-poking kappa'.


	4. It Happens Like This

**Title**: A Soft Reboot (4/?)**  
****Rating**: PG (Subject to change)  
**Warnings**: Swear words  
**Summary**: Once every couple centuries, the nations inexplicably disappear and are reborn as humans. But the memories and nationhood gradually return and they have funny ways of getting back to each other.  
**AN**: Hello. It's November, so have an exposition chapter. (Also, millions and millions of parentheses. Just like this one.)

* * *

It happens like this: Liechtenstein is sitting on a sofa next to him, purple in her dress and a ribbon in her hair. She is focused on her embroidery, the swoop and loop of her hand dipping in and out Switzerland's peripheral vision. He is reading the paper, reading about the oncoming heatwave (he's been feeling feverish), and the glint of her needle loops down but doesn't complete its journey. The needle drops.

She bends forward, her small hand pressed to her suddenly pale forehead. A tiny choked gasp leaves her.

"Lilli?" Switzerland turns sharply, body tight with concern. He reaches forward to touch her. "Lilli, what's wrong?"

"Broth-"

And then she is gone.

Her dress crumples and folds in on itself. Her embroidery falls. It lies unfinished in the wide, empty scoop of the skirt and her stockings slither into her brown, patent shoes. Liechtenstein's ribbon swoops and loops down, just like her needle did, and Switzerland stares at the clean sunlight streaming through the space she used to inhabit, at the dust motes that move eagerly to fill it.

She hadn't even had the time to look at him with wide, rabbit eyes before she had vanished. Didn't have the time to cry out as every atom of her being shook and vibrated and collapsed in on itself.

The needle swings, hanging off the edge of the sofa and the letters she had been creating out of red thread remain incomplete.

Switzerland doesn't know what to do and he stares for a good while longer.

It takes him ten minutes before his hands would stop shaking enough to tap out Germany's number on his phone.

* * *

It is six in the morning and England's nerves are already being rubbed raw. The taxi to Heathrow airport is late, it's raining and he is on the verge of putting the kettle on for another pot of tea. (But if he does, the taxi will arrive just as he's finishing taking the tea bag out and then he'll have to wash up because he doesn't want to leave dirty dishes over the weekend and it's too much to think about this early in the morning.)

He jumps as his phone vibrates against his thigh in his pocket and the _pew pew pew _of retro-game explosions fill the morning. He smiles into the phone but pretends he's not.

"Have you been fiddling with my phone again, Alfred?"

America laughs, warms England like tea. "I had to! Come on, Big Ben chimes? How full of yourself can you get?"

"I don't whinge about your _California Girls _ringtone."

"That's cuz you like it," America is already in Düsseldorf, eating croissant and cold cuts by the Rhine. He watches a flock of ducks fly low over the river, watches the sun strikes their feathers and makes them gleam bright magnesium white. He leans back in his chair, presses his mouth against the mouthpiece and breathes in England's static breaths along the airwaves. "Can't wait until you get here," he says. "I forget how quiet Europe is."

"Quiet suits me."

"That's because you're a dinosaur."

"Ha. Ha. Ha." The sound of tyre on gravel announces the taxi's arrival and England stands. "Taxi's here. I'll text you when I get in to Düsseldorf, okay?"

"Alright. Don't strain yourself too much – oh, I found tickets for a football game! Didn't think that I'd find something awesome like here in sauerkraut and sausage land."

"I hope you mean actual football and not your bastardisation of the sport."

America just laughs again. "Later old man."

England gets in to the taxi, debates briefly whether to read the newspaper or not. He knows already what's happening inside him, but doesn't want to think about it, really. He flicks through it anyway, just to give his hands something to do, and pauses on an article about the proposed Welsh assembly referendum and wonders why he paused. England hasn't heard from his brother for a while and this isn't unusual. But he's still worried for some reason and thinks about calling Wales.

But England doesn't, feels the weight of his phone inside his pocket, and says to the driver instead, "Wake me up when we get there, please." Before he falls asleep, England reaches deep, down inside himself, where the western hills of Wales lie and he can't feel anything.

* * *

Germany looks more tired than usual, the bags under his eyes full of the sleep he didn't get. Italy pats his hand as they sit together in one of the conference rooms in the Düsseldorf Rathaus. It's midday and they're waiting for the others to arrive for an informal-but-still-important meeting.

It's all they ever seem to do nowadays: have meetings. (Even Italy had managed to perfect the time of packing to just seven minutes. His travel kit is always ready and suits hang on doors around the house, waiting for him to throw into his suitcase.) Germany, tired of the pointless blathering, would shuffle his notes and stand up and say, "We'll leave this for tomorrow." That was the bell ringing at 4:30 at the end of class and everyone would rush to the bar and think about the past and the time they actually felt _excited _about things.

Italy says something and it goes straight through the airspace above Germany's head. He shakes his head and apologises. "Could you repeat that?"

"Ve, is Germany tired?"

Germany pinches his the bridge of his nose and sighs deeply. He had been up all night arguing with one of the more nationalist members of his government about Turkish immigration and how,_ no_, he couldn't just tell them to politely fuck off, things didn't work like that. The human hadn't left until Germany had said that he'd at least talk to Turkey, something he had no intention of doing, and was only able to collapse into bed when the first stars were winking out in the light of dawn.

Then the phone rings some hours later and Germany would have flung it at a wall if he had the energy. On the other end of the line, Switzerland is in near hysteria, his voice rattling in Switzerdeutsch, which Germany can't really understand even with a full night's sleep. He mumbles something about dealing with it later and _please_ use High German next time and then hangs up and turns his phone off.

He gets a few more hours of sleep and wakes up and after remembering, he feels the heavy lump of guilt form somewhere in his chest. So he calls Switzerland with an apology ready on his tongue: he was stressed and tired and completely incoherent, so what was it that you wanted to talk about?

Switzerland doesn't pick up.

Germany tries two more times before thinking, _'He must be busy.' _But that doesn't dislodge the lump that turns into tight knot in his stomach. The knot is still there now as Italy rubs his thumb over the fleshy part of his hand, tangled as hair in a plug hole. He tries again, one more time.

(What Germany doesn't know is that Switzerland's phone is in the folds of his crumpled green uniform. The buzz of its vibrations against the wooden floor and the swirl of dust motes are the only sounds in the now empty house.)

He snaps his phone closed with a sigh, which prompts a concerned look from Italy. But other nations begin to trickle in and Germany has to focus on now. (He asks France whether Switzerland or Liechtenstein has called and when France says no, he can't hide his concern.)

Germany manages to focus, manages to focus on Russia and America and Canada and China and France and Japan. (England is late due to some union strike at the airport. British Airways?) He focuses until Italy's phone goes off in the middle of the meeting. It's part unusual because Italy's phone usually lies forgotten at the bottom of his suitcase and also part usual because he's forgotten to turn it off. Germany doesn't even have time to berate him for not switching it to silent before Italy flips it open with exuberant, "Big brother Spain!" But the light in his eyes turns to puzzlement as he tilts his head and says, "Belgium? No, I haven't seen her. Is everything – she's huh? Gone?"

This strikes something like familiarity in Germany's mind and the Swiss-German that he couldn't understand that morning is suddenly horrifyingly clear to him. ("_She's gone, she's gone, please-_") and the knot in his stomach tightens and tangles. He takes the phone from Italy, whose level-headedness is starting to tilt and slide into panic. "What's going on?" he says and France's eyes pierce through him from the other side of the table.

"Freija's disappeared." Germany can hear Romano swearing in the background and crashes that sound like tables being flipped over. Spain's voice is hoarse, but urgent. "She's – she was staying with us in Madrid and went out last night."

"Belgium didn't come back?"

Spain makes a strangled noise and Germany hears the rustling of Spain running his hand through his hair in agitation. "No, she did come back. She- "

Germany finds out that she came back in the form of a sparkly dress and high-heeled shoes, lying at the bottom of the stairs of Spain's house. Romano had accompanied her that night, got her back into the house safely and she had stayed downstairs to get some water while he went to bed.

Her earrings and necklace and the smashed glass glint in a puddle of water on the stone floor.

Germany hands the phone back to Italy. He calls Switzerland and listens to his voice mail again and feels his stomach sink down and down into dread. _'What is going on?'_

China watches the proceedings calmly and he nonchalantly asks France whether Seychelles has contacted him recently and the way the colour drains from his face only secure, cement China's suspicions. "We're dying," he says. And he laughs and says it again with an air of _relief_ as everyone stares.

"We're_ dying."_

* * *

**AN: **This is a really, really weird chapter, but I had to get it out there so I can move on from this rut. It didn't turn out like anything I wanted but what_ever_. (That's a super bad attitude to have.) Um, I really want to get the North American bros in the next chapter if I can. Either that or baby!Greece. Or maybe a weird hybrid of the two. Who knows.

Reviews are awesome. Do you want to be awesome? I think so. Anyway, thank you for reading!


	5. The Itch

**Title**: A Soft Reboot (5/?)**  
****Rating**: PG (Subject to change)  
**Warnings**: Swear words  
**Summary**: Once every couple centuries, the nations inexplicably disappear and are reborn as humans. But the memories and nationhood gradually return and they have funny ways of getting back to each other.

* * *

Danny Bell lives in one of those towns where the local paper is only a few pages long, purely due to a lack of things happening. The summers there are cracked and parched and the clouds boil in an endless, azure sky. The people are just as unexciting as the paper: sluggish, dry and stagnant. If the neighbourhood isn't fanning themselves on the front porch, they'll have retreated to the cool of fridges and air-conditioners. Everyone knows each other.

Since his birth, Danny has been in the newspaper exactly three times.

It is into this town that Danny arrives. His father and his heavily pregnant mother had just left a friend's house in North Dakota and they are on their way to Winnipeg, to visit family. The doctor at home said that the baby shouldn't be due for another couple weeks, so a short trip wouldn't be too bad. As soon as they approach the American-Canadian border in their little red car, the contractions hit with a suddenness and a ferocity that make Mrs. Bell cry out.

"It felt like you wanted out, right now, right there," she would later tell him, hoisting him up on her knee. "You were stomping and kicking your way out of my tummy. So we pulled the car over and out you popped! You were so small and pink, like a squirmy little rat." Danny would pull a face, blue eyes screwed shut, but this was one of his favourite stories, so he doesn't mind really. "But could you imagine our surprise when we realised that there was another one still inside me!"

At this point, Mr. Bell would whisper loudly, "No wonder she was so fat!" and the boys would snicker and Mrs. Bell would pretend to be offended, but would smile fondly at her husband. "But Timmy wasn't coming out as easily, he was still happy in mommy's tummy. So we jumped back in the car and we zoomed through the border and into the first hospital we could find." And Tim Bell would clamber on to Mrs. Bell's lap, wriggling next to his brother.

"So Timmy's a Canadian? Ewww!"

"I'd rather be a Canadian than a stinky American!"

Their words would have no real sting, but Mrs. Bell would say, "Boys." And they would stop and duck their heads, grinning at each other under long eyelashes. Then Mr. Bell would have to go to work at the town hall and when he came back, they would have chicken casserole with mashed potatoes and everything was Okay.

Their story is featured in the town paper and the article had been cut out with the care of concentrated children and preserved in a frame in the entrance hall. But even without the article, everyone would have known of the Bell twins. Their two heads are as blond as wheat and their faces are still pudgy with the fat of babyhood. Danny's eyes are cornflower blue while Tim have a queer indigo tint in his when he stands in the light. They spend their spare time adventuring in the tree house their dad built, riding bikes over self-constructed ramps, breaking windows with baseballs and then running like hell so old Mr. Gregor won't shoot them. One is hardly seen without the other.

The second time Danny is in the newspaper is when he is seven. It was a particularly hot summer, where flies were known to drop dead mid-flight because of the heat. Fires are common, which isn't surprising as Danny feels that he himself could burst into flame at any moment and the kids would spend their afternoons under the cooler shade of the trees, panting like dogs.

It is Tim who points at a tall column of smoke, rising straight up into the windless sky. "Hey, reckon someone's having a bonfire?"

"Naw, it's too hot," Danny replies with all the wisdom and self-assurance of an older brother. ("Only by half an hour!") "Let's go have a look." Everyone is inside, sleeping or watching television to escape the oppressive heat, so no one is there to see the two little boys totter off in the direction of the smoke.

It wasn't a bonfire. They stand in front of the burning house, clutching each other's sweaty hand so tightly they didn't know whose fingers were whose. The house is alive; a huge crackling monster with fire in its eyes and mouth. Black ash pours from the windows, tumbling in the streams of boiling air. The smell is acrid and it burnt the throat and the lungs. But they stand, staring, transfixed as the house screamed and fell apart inside.

Tim tugs at him. "Danny, let's go! They might think we did it or something!" But Danny watches, takes in the flames and sees the embers fly and _remembers. Remembers screaming, eyes wide and chest straining, as English men threw their torches, one by one through the White House windows. Remembers the clouds of smoke, black as coal, billowing out as the fire raged and gutted his beloved building. Remembers the icy expression on England's face, the shadows deep in his skin, as he stood on Pennsylvania Avenue and watches. _

He doesn't realise he's actually screaming and sobbing until Tim hits him hard enough to hurt. And then he is running, tripping over his shoelaces, letting Tim pull him along until they had both collapse on the sidewalk. But the heat on his face and in his lungs and his eyes is still there. Danny feels his breath catch and catch again, and he is throwing up, spewing out his stomach like the house had been spewing black smoke and bile, like the White House had been coughing up smoke.

Tim rubs his back, little presses with his little hand, making hushing sounds like their mom would when they were bedridden with fever or pox. "Hey, Danny, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay."

"How could he," Danny sobs, hot and angry. "How could he, that was against the rules, it's not fair, _it's not fair-" _

Then Tim stops rubbing his back, and punches him instead.

Danny reels back, red eyes wide as he scrambles away. It hadn't really hurt, to be honest. But it had been an honest-to-god sucker-punch from his own brother. His _brother_. "Tim, what-"

"It's not fair? It's not stinkin' fair?" Tim yells, fists tight and furious. "You tell that that to my men in York!" And he lauches himself at his brother, limbs wild and flailing and Danny automatically fights back, too angry to make sense of what they are doing.

They would have fought until both of them were dead, they thought, unless the burning house hadn't collapsed with such a crash that they could hear it and they both stopped to think to call the fire brigade.

Even though there had been no one in there at the time, and the house was little more than a glorified shack anyway, the boys are swiftly declared heroes and are treated as such. Free sweets from the store, the adoration of their classmates, mom making their favourite stew – it isn't bad.

Maybe about five days later, after having been tucked in by their dad and given Hero Kisses, Danny stares up at the glowing stars on the ceiling and whispers to Tim, "Hey. Being a hero's pretty sweet, huh."

"Yeah. Jenny looks at me now. Like I'm not invisible." There is a toothy grin in his voice and Danny can practically feel the blush radiating off his brother's face.

"Haha, what? Is she your girlfriend?"

Tim kicks the bottom of Danny's bunk until he hears an _Oof! _"Shut up!"

Danny just laughs. "I'm going to be a hero when I grow up."

"You're already a hero now," Tim points out.

"Yeah, but you know, like a proper one. You saw how cool Connor's brother was, in the fire truck? That's gonna be me."

"A firefighter?"

"Dunno. Or maybe a policeman!"

"How about a lawyer? Like Uncle Jay?"

"No way! Boringggg!"

They giggle a little and then settle, heads sinking into their pillows.

"Hey, Timmy?"

"Yeah?"

"Sorry about York."

There is such a long silence that Danny thinks that Tim might not have heard him. He debates whether to say it again, before he hears the tiny voice below him.

"I guess it wasn't really me you were fighting. It's okay."

But it isn't, really. The fire had started something inside the both of them, had lit their memories alight. For the first time, they dream of their histories and their peoples, their relationship beyond brothers. And when they wake up, they know that they were no longer normal.

And suddenly, everything isn't Okay anymore.

The changes don't come immediately. They wake up and continue as usual. But the dreams come at full force, as if the thin mental skin that had been holding them back had split and burst when they inhaled the smoke of the Burning House. At night, Danny hunts buffalo on the plains, feels the wind in his hair and the dust on his face, feels the shifting muscles of his horse beneath him. Tim fishes and gathers wood with the First Nations, speak and understands Cree and Inuktitut, as if the languages have always been there, just hiding under his tongue. When wars break out between either of their peoples, Danny and Tim can do nothing but stand back and watch as they tear each other apart in their dreams.

"We can't do anything about it," Tim says as Danny washes the tears-trails stained on his cheeks away. "I asked Dad to check on the internet: it's history. It's already happened, we can't change anything."

"Why can't they just get along? They're all the same! I hate it," Danny says. "I don't want to sleep anymore."

But he has to. Even though he's not completely human, he's not completely something else and sleeps and dreams and watches helplessly as Europeans settlers overwhelm his land, his body, until they're a part of him. They bring weapons and sickness and a cloud of blood with them. But years and decades pass in single nights and before long, the both of them have accepted these invaders into them.

Mr. and Mrs. Bell aren't blind. They notice the nightmares, they notice the changes (however slight) and they notice how their boys seem to have grown up over night. How their skin is smooth, but Mrs. Bell swears that sometimes she sees dark circles under their eyes and a weary expression that bends and breaks her heart.

It takes Danny two years until he feels like he fits in his body again, until he's developed the mental strength to see the difference between the past and today. He starts smiling and running around again and his parents nearly collapse into each other with relief when they see him up in the tree house again. Whenever it's so hot that the road almost melts and the heat rises in palpable waves, he climbs to the highest point and watches the distance for as long as he can bear. He says that he feels like he's waiting for something, for the white sail of ship that would sail over the shiny horizon. "It looks like water! See?"

It had been two years of flash sicknesses, of unexplained tears and of heads pushed close together and whispers that would go silent when Mr. or Mrs. Bell would come in. But now, Danny's grades shoot up, he's the strongest boy in his class and possibly the most popular.

It's not the same case for his brother.

Danny has been in the paper three times, but not before Tim has. The first at his birth, the second at the Burning House and the third a plea for donations for his medical fees. The Bells ask every doctor in the area, but none of them can explain his increasing exhaustion, his brittle bones, his trembling fingers. Tim's gold hair becomes dull and droops and his eyes are glazed like frost on glass.

Their parents try everything.

Danny quits every club he's in, rejects every invitation he receives, so he can run home and be with his brother. "Hey there, Timmy," he says and smiles when Tim grasps his hand. Smiles through the cold of his paper-thin skin. "Jenny asked about you today. She wanted to know when you're coming back."

Tim's voice is ragged and it's an effort to speak. "What did you say?"

"Said as soon as she gives you a kiss, you'll come back."

Tim doesn't have the energy to hit him.

The doctors don't know what it is, even after test after test after test. But Danny might. He has an inkling of what they are, of what makes them different. He feels like he's known it before, but just forgotten somehow. Flashes of the truth sometimes come to him: how calling his brother 'Timmy' feels wrong somehow, how he feels connected to every single person he knows, how he feels like he hasn't met the rest of him yet.

Tim's sleeping fitfully upstairs one night and Danny's pushing his food around his plate, when he says to his parents, "I think we should go to Canada."

Mrs. Bell looks at him with tired eyes, exhausted and miserable after having had to coax Tim into eating small spoonfuls of soup, only to watch him throw it up again. "Why's that, honey?"

"Well, Timmy's always talking about it. I just thought it might make him happy or something. And besides, we haven't gone on vacation for a while! Dad's _always_ working, and so are you, so I just thought…."

Mr. Bell nods, thoughtful. "I could take a couple days off. Maybe the air there might do your brother some good. I think we have some relatives in Toronto we can stay with. How'd you like to see Niagara Falls, son? "

When Danny whispers the news to Tim, all he can do is smile weakly and breathe out, _"Finally." _Danny feels heroic.

Danny carries Tim through the airport on his back and only with the greatest hesitance gave him to the lady so he could be pushed around on a wheelchair instead. When they're on the plane, Tim perks up with every mile that brings them closer to the border. The light in his eyes returns by the time they land and with an arm around Danny's shoulders, he walks off that plane. Their parents can't believe it when Tim shakes his head at the wheelchair waiting for him.

"Danny," he says, grinning so wide that Danny can't help but grin back. "Danny, I've come _home._"

Danny punches him on the shoulder. "Don't start kissing the ground. You'll get sick again."

When Tim returns the punch with almost equal force, Danny realises he's got his brother back.

Of course, Tim doesn't want to leave. How could he, when he is so deeply rooted in the soil of his birthplace, when he feels the freshwater run through his veins, the ice in his breath? He feels a deep sense of contentment that engulfs him, a balm that seeps into the holes and cavities worn into his bones.

Danny catches him lying outside in the yard of the house the Bells rented, just inhaling the smell of grass and sun. Tim's flushed and golden and vibrant, his wasted muscles slowly, but not _that_ slowly, strengthening and lengthening. Muscle over bone, grass over soil.

It's great, it's all great. They move there, Mr. Bell finds a new job and Danny and Tim go to a new school and everyone's happy. Tim's on the hockey team, Danny prefers football and both have exceptional grades due to the knowledge that they've been born with.

But Danny knows it's only a matter of time before it goes to great to not okay. He has The Itch. It's a constant tingling just under his skin, a minuscule tremor that barely disturbs the fine golden hairs on his arms and legs. It's easy enough to ignore for the first year, and then the second, but by the third it's become a whine in his head, a rhythmic clenching of his insides. When he notices that his seemingly perpetual tan is starting to fade to the beginnings of a sick pallor, he knows it's time to go back home.

He's only thirteen but Danny's already got it all planned out. They have an uncle in DC, who was always bringing the boys presents and kept pestering them to visit him. They had planned to and they even had dates in diaries and everything. But then Tim got… sick.

Danny didn't forget.

He begs and pleads, says that he wants to start studying law like his uncle, says that he hates school in Canada, says that he doesn't feel American, says hurtful and childish things so his parents send him away.

So he doesn't waste away to nothing.

Finally, _finally_, they agree, but only with Tim's gentle insistence. Danny races up the stairs and is throwing his things into a suitcase before they even finish nodding.

He promises to visit often, a promise that he intends to keep. Their parents are so confused and soultwisted and it shows on their faces as they say goodbye to him at the airport. Tim hugs him, squeezes his hand and feels the tremour in his fingers. "Talk to me okay?" he says. _Talk to me about the dreams and the nightmares, about the memories and what is happening to us. Don't you dare go through this alone. _

"Sure." And Danny's through the gate, on his way through security and on his way home.

Mr. and Mrs. Bell stand close to one another, hands tightly intertwined. "Was it just me," Mr. Bell murmurs to his wife. "Or did he feel a little thinner?"

Tim ignores the secret looks they shoot him and he says nothing.

* * *

Danny lands in DC with his bones solid and his head clean and clear like water and he spends a couple weeks recuperating. His uncle doesn't fuss over him, but is startled when Danny knows his way around Washington despite never having been there before. They get on well enough and Danny's enrolled into the local school and, given everything, his life is pretty normal. Boring, but normal.

Until he's seventeen.

He's seventeen, and he's browsing through universities and colleges on the internet. Tim's going to some fancy art school in Toronto and Danny plans on following his lifelong dream of becoming a hero. He's torn between what kind though. Lawyer? Policeman? Doctor? Danny wants to help his people _so much_ that it's a physical hunger,and something tells him that he has time all the time in the world to learn.

He has Harvard, Yale, Brown, even Cambridge and Oxford websites up on multiple tabs on his browser. Danny knows he can easily get in to wherever he chooses, armed with almost five-hundred years of America's knowledge and the deep, innate understanding he has of everyone with two feet on his soil.

Danny is aimlessly scrolling through Google images after having searched 'Oxford', just out of interest, when he sees something that stops him. The air in his lungs burns and he can't breathe and he stares at this small picture of a face that was there in his memories when all this started. Blond hair and green eyes, formidable eyebrows and a cocky smirk.

It take him an age to click on it and Google takes him to an article about how James Plender won some scholarship for Oxford University and how he left school with six A*s and a whole string of prizes. The article also features an Asian kid from the same school, who has also been accepted into Oxford to study microtechnology.

His face is familiar as well and Danny feels a headache quickly forming. He tastes smoke in his mouth, can hear a soft whine in his ears and the word _kamikaze _curls across his vision.

When Danny stops shaking, feels the heat against his skin fade, he attaches the pictures to an email and addresses it to Tim. _'Recognize these guys?' _he writes. He sends it and the answer is almost immediate.

'_Yes. Who are they?' _

Danny doesn't know. But what he does know is that he's come to a decision based completely on an age-old feeling in his gut: He's going to Britain to study criminal justice and law at Oxford. He tells Uncle Jay this, who raises an eyebrow.

"England? You sure? You realise that their law courses are completely different there. You won't be able to do pre-law and there's only three years of study, not including a masters and-"

"I'm sure."

Uncle Jay doesn't see the sense in this, but he's also never seen his nephew so resolute about something. So he just nods and says something about finding him a course to help him prepare for the interviews and the entrance LNAT exam next year. Danny wants to go now, to track down these people and ask them '_do you dream? Do you feel ancient and old and different?' _But Danny's waited this long to find about what he is exactly.

He can wait a little longer.

* * *

**AN: **Thank you everyone for your really kind reviews! Honestly, nothing is better than waking up and finding comments in my inbox. So thank you! Sorry about how slow moving this is, I'm going to try up the pace a little with the next chapter. Thank you **hymenated **for betaing.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	6. A Modern Oracle

**Title**: A Soft Reboot (6/?)**  
Rating**: PG (Subject to change)  
**Warnings**: Swear words  
**Summary**: Once every couple centuries, the nations inexplicably disappear and are reborn as humans. But the memories and nationhood gradually return and they have funny ways of getting back to each other.

* * *

Russia is the first to react and swiftly draws out his gun. His face is loose and pleasant, but his grip is anything but that. The _click _of the revolver's hammer is deafening in the silent meeting room.

China rolls his eyes and slaps a hand to his forehead. "Put that away," he hisses. "Are you an idiot?"

"You say we're dying," Russia says, voice light. "Explain why and you won't be the first."

"Do we have to go through this every time this happens? Fine, perhaps that was a bad way to phrase it," China says. "Just _think_ for a moment."

Russia does and realisation spreads slowly through him and it relaxes the tension in his body. He slips the gun back into his coat and retrieves instead a larger-than-normal hipflask. "Ah, the reboot? Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?" he says pleasantly, draining the water from the tumbler in front of him and replacing it with vodka. He holds the flask up and shakes it in China's direction. "Would you join me, comrade? It looks like we'll be in for a long night."

"Please." China grabs his glass and settles into the chair next to Russia.

"I'd prefer wine, but this will do, I suppose," France says and his resigned expression say that France knows what's going on as well, and Germany can't take any more.

"Excuse me," Germany says, desperately trying to keep his tone level. What he really wants to say is: Liechtenstein and Switzerland aren't answering their phones, Belgium's suddenly a puddle of wet clothes at the foot of Spain's stairs, Seychelles hasn't been heard from for a while, and you are suggesting that they sit around and celebrate with liquor? _Have you gone insane?_

Instead, he says, "What the hell is going on?"

China looks at him, dark eyebrows raised and head tilted in a manner that said, _haven't you figured this out yet? _But then he realises that he's the one who hasn't figured it out and his cheeks flush with embarrassment. "Ah, apologies, Germany. I often forget how young you are as a nation."

It's not meant to sound condescending, but it does and Germany can't help but feel a little affronted. He's about to protest when a small voice behind him says, "We're being reborn," Italy's looking down, fists clenched and shoulders trembling. "We're… going to die and then- "

"_WHAT?_" America explodes. He looks more confused than distressed. "But we're nations. _Nations_. We can't die! That's- that's-"

"Calm down," China says and rubs his face in frustration. "_Aiyah, _I knew I should have explained it first before telling you." He points at America and Germany in succession. "_You_ and _you_ are both young. The reboot, that is, our deaths, occurs every several centuries and the younger we are, the more easily we tend to forget that it happened. It's possible that you haven't even experienced one at all, America. And Canada, I suppose," he adds as an afterthought.

"What do you mean young?" America looks wildly about, hoping someone will tell him it's a cruel joke, that they're not just popping out of existence. "I mean, I know you guys have been around a lot longer than me, but I was there even before England found me…"

China shakes his head. "What I meant was that the current form your country is in _now_ is young. Germany, when did you unify again?"

Germany frowns. "The reunification was in 1990, but I don't see-"

"And with the reunification, you became the country you are today, politically, culturally and economically." With that, he leans back and drinks, closed for discussion.

"So we're dying and you're okay with this?" America says, incredulous.

"America-san, it's meant to be a good thing," Japan tries, but it's too late. Panic has burrowed into America's consciousness and his vision is tinged with terror.

"Then- then- we need to stop it!" he cries, fearful of what he doesn't understand. "We can stop it, we still have time and together we could-"

"_Don't you dare_." The vodka has warmed China's blood and he grabs at America's tie, yanks him forward until America's staring straight into China's narrowed, bottomless eyes. France rises to help him, but Russia waves him back down.

"Aren't you _tired_, boy?" China hisses, heated and intense "Aren't you tired of just sitting around and remembering what we used to do? What we used to _be_?" He waves an arm around wildly and shakes America with the other. "We used to fight and scream and grow and love and fuck and bleed and _care_. Do you care now? When was the last time you checked what was going on inside you, _ha_?" He pushes America roughly away and picks up his glass again. "Don't you dare try and stop this. I want some feeling inside of me again. I want some hope."

America is stunned and doesn't say anything for a long moment. He thinks of the days when he would just sit on the porch, watch the kids run past and suddenly, somehow they're adults and have their own kids and they have their own and time just passes by in a neverending rope of people, constantly growing while America is static and stagnant and rotting inside.

But then he thinks of England, thinks of Arthur, who he has known for so long and their relationship is anything but stagnant and he can't lose it all. He just can't.

As if reading his mind, China says, a little more gently, "You don't need to worry. We're not going to disappear completely. We remain ourselves in essence, as long as our land doesn't change too much. And we always end up finding each other again.

"But-" China glances at the clock above the door. It's almost one. "If you have anything to say to England, then you should go find him now. He probably doesn't have much time left."

The calm that had just begun to settle over America instantly dissipates. "W-what? What do you mean?"

"The smallest nations go first. And England, well-"

America's out the door before China finishes his sentence.

Italy twists his hands nervously. "Shouldn't someone go after him?"

China turns away from the door. "He will be okay. You, however-" He looks at Italy, forehead slightly furrowed. "I'm not so sure about."

* * *

James takes in the bloodshot eyes, the acrid smell and the loose, floppy smile about to slide right off the boy's face, and James decides, _right, Japan's friend is high as fuck_.

"Hey," he says, his voice low and full of sleep. He shuffles to the side to let Mitsuru and James into the house. "Come on in. Mind the cats."

It seems like a stupid warning, but they actually _do_ have to mind the furry bodies stretched out limply over every surface available. James steps carefully between the sleeping animals. It's dark inside, and smells slightly like cat litter and fish, but when James breathes in deep, it also smells like olives and wine, warm sunlight and thyme leaves.

They follow him upstairs and he when he opens a door, a dark shadow shoots past and makes Mitsuru jump and James swear. The boy chuckles and flops on to his bed, stares at them with hooded eyes.

The boy is Kit Papadopoulos and he's from Greece and, if Mitsuru is right, he's different. Like them.

At first, James has his doubts. He doesn't sense anything peculiar about this tall, stoner boy with shaggy brown hair. But then he looks at Kit's eyes, looks properly, and he has the same vastness inside him, the same deep, deep holes into his head.

"Guess you're here to talk about nationhood then," Kit says. His accent is thick and slow like syrup, and his smile is even slower. "That's what the visions told me at least."

James frowns. They had dreams of the past, but never of the future. "Visions?"

"Yeah. They're not really clear most of the time but I'll take what I can get." And he puts a blunt to his lips (_When did he get that?_) and inhales, takes the smoke down to the bottom of his lungs, into his blood, and everything about him suddenly smudges and smears. He stares at them, glasslike, while Mitsuru and James glance at each other, unsure of what to do.

"So you're the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and you're Japan,_" _Kit finally says, something that James and Mitsuru have only suspected but never said out loud. "Nice to meet you, I am the Hellenic Republic, or, if you prefer, Greece. "

It's absurd, really. You can't say that someone is a country, that someone is a place or a landmass or anything like that. A person is a person. James is James and Mitsuru is Mitsuru. That's how it should be. Yet, _United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland _fits round James' shoulders snugly, like a tailored jacket. And it fits him well.

"How- how did you know?" James asks, confused at how unconfused he is about the entire thing.

Kit sits up, raises the joint. "There used to be temples and priests and priestesses in Greece called oracles. They would sit and breathe in the gas from the ground, which would send them into a stupor and allow them to divine the future." He takes another drag, blows the smoke out and it rises and curls the same way the temple incense would have so long ago. "This might not be methane, but it seems to work pretty well."

"So, we're… we're countries," Mitsuru says, still unsure even though he's known it all his life. It's just _strange_ to actually talk about it. "What does that mean for us?"

"It means a whole lot of things," Kit says. "It means that we should be standing at the shoulders of our leaders and taking active part in our growth and evolution. It means that we should be meeting regularly with other nations and regulating our relationships.

"Your people's joys will become your joy, their pride your pride."

James doesn't like this. Kit's talking about them as if they're important on an international scale, as if they have the power to control the way the world works. That's a lot of responsibility for someone who is only just about to turn eighteen –

Except he's not really eighteen, James realises. He doesn't even know how old he is. Hundred's of years old? Maybe even thousands? This, more than anything else, makes him feel sick. It's real.

He really isn't normal.

He thought that after all those nightmares of wars, after the magnetic pull he feels towards his land (which is actually _him _somehow), after always wondering, finding out what he was would be a relief. It isn't.

"So that's it then," James says, with more venom than he means to reveal. "That's our future decided. Go work in government as some official and play politics like some dating game and then die."

Kit blinks slowly at him. "Die? Who said anything about dying?"

_"What?"_

"We're nations. Not human. How are we supposed to die?"

It takes a moment. But then the air around them solidifies, turns thick and heavy and James can't breathe. "We're… we're…" But he can't say it. He laughs instead, hysteria creeping in the undertones. Mitsuru's silent and pale and still as if covered in frost, and Kit is humming tonelessly, rolling the blunt between his fingers.

What are you supposed to do when someone tells you that you're immortal?

They leave pretty quickly after that. James doesn't think he can handle any more revelations about himself. Kit says, "Later James, Nekojirou-san." and Mitsuru sighs long-sufferingly.

They're almost out the gate, when Kit shouts, "Wait! I forgot to tell you something." He moves towards them, and James is struck by how out of place Kit, tall and suntouched, looks on this grey suburban street.

"You're not immortal yet," he says, and James wants to kick him for forcing him think to about it again. "We're still human, _kind of_. We're still missing something."

"What?" James asks, before he can stop himself.

But Kit shakes his head. "I'm not sure. I just thought I should tell you before you try running into traffic to test it out or something."

James turns and stalks off without a word and hears Kit's deep laughter behind him. "Your friend is a prick," James says when Mitsuru catches up.

"Why? Because he's forcing you to face the reality of what we are, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?" Mitsuru says placidly.

"_Don't-_" James sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, as if trying to ward off a headache. "Fine, yes. Just, it's a lot to take in, alright?"

"Hmm."

"I mean, immortal? How the fuck am I supposed to explain to my parents why I'm not aging? You think no one's going to notice?"

"Maybe it doesn't work that way. Also, we're not immortal."

"_Yet_."

"Yet."

James kicks at a rock and watches it skitter away on to the road. "Also, he could have offered us some of his weed," James grumbles and Mitsuru manages to look disapproving and humoured at the same time. "So? What about you? What do you think about him?"

The question takes Mitsuru by surprise, but he thinks carefully. "We have a good relationship," he says. "He's very interested in Japan and he's not very excitable. I suppose we're quite similar."

"Except you don't go getting yourself high as a kite."

"No," Mitsuru admits. "But, I believe that Greece does not smoke for fun. I think he's trying to find out more about us and what we're supposed to be doing. We should probably do the same."

James grudgingly agrees but as they walk home together, he decides to put off thinking about this huge responsibility he's suddenly been heaped with for just a while longer.

* * *

**AN: **This was really horrible to write. I guess it's just one of those _off_ chapters or something. It's got a lot of dialogue and exposition, two things I'm not really that great at so apologies for the drop in quality. Also, guys I did pass my exams so I'll be going to Germany next month to help teach English at a school and oh my goodness it's all very exciting and I'm going to be such a terrible teacher. But I guess this also means I may be inactive for a while. Or it maybe not, I might be resorting to writing more as a coping mechanism? Who knows.

So wish me luck! Thanks for reading!


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